I am new to this game, so if the final has this in store, or if it is not planned then I apologize, however keep reading if you wish to hear me out.

Each faction has a home base, which has sentry cannons and whatnot which make it safe for non pk type players and a place for people to meet up.

Outside of that, are outposts, these sectors act like borders. They can be taken by a faction, and then the territory is owned by that particular faction. Players may then dock at the station that inhabits this area.

What if one faction is too strong? Well this may be the case, however when you get closer to the home base of another team, they will be stronger in numbers as they wont be spread out as far.

This would make a great intergalactic war and strategy type game, where trade and heroes may exist. Take 10 of your buddies on a mission to take a major point on the enemy front lines.. punch a hole in their defense and take over a nice trade post.

Add to this if you like, or tell me why this wont work.. look forward to hearing from you all!

My idea is... erm...not mine, but I like it anyhow:

If a nation's color (and ONLY that color) were to be in a sector (undocked) for a certain time (5 mins?), they would capture the station. It would become a nation station with nation-only ships, defense bots and all that good stuff. To reclaim it, another nation would have to occupy it. You wouldn't be allowed to set home there, though. Your home would be moved to the next closest unnational sector or something. Also, it should return to default if no one nation occupies it for 5 mins (if there's more than one nation). This wouold be cool.

This has been brought up before. The problem is how you would "capture" the station. My suggestion is have the station have shields which is like are armor now, when it's shields drop below 0, you dock and demand tribute and the station is yours.

Nice Idea.. but would it really work..(Keeping an open mind to it all)

What i mean is.. if you keep taking over stations, then that station will lose trade? Thinking on a NPC point of view?
And you would only get nations taking over stations when their numbers out number the defenders? Also what happens if a station gets taken over and another nation memeber has homed there? Do they lose there ship? have to pay to get it released? or does it become destoryed?

Now on that note, lets say if i docked at a stn, quit the game and loaded it up two days later, when the station had been taken over in the mean time. Lets just stay that it was also my last and only ship,and i had low funds, as i was a noob? What would happen there?

???

i await ur thoughts ; )

WM

Craigus Meridius,

Good question about the home station being captured. However, I do have a solution.

You could have all of your ships and cargo in that stn sent back to your factions main base (the uncapturable one), as well your home stn would be reset there.

Or, you lose everything from the station that was taken (by not playing you arent helping defend it anyway), and are reset to your faction's home base (the uncapturable one). This makes setting new home stations with many ships dangerous, however would be a strategic advantage when fighting on enemy lines.


Also, instead of going back to the factions main uncapturable base, it could be sent to the closest friendly zone... but i think i like the original idea


Also would if affect trade? Sure would! I think this would make a driving force for people to secure certain areas. ie. Sector 14

thanks for the great replies!

How about adding a FPS so you can go shoot it out in an assault on the station? =P

/me waits for Vendetta 4.0 to have that

As the devs have said many a time, ALL COMBAT WILL TAKE PLACE IN A SPACESHIP, IN SPACE.

What about adding "flags" throughout the sector that could be captureable? Once all the flags are captured, the neutral station's color will go from grey to the winning nation's color. All the flags need to be captured to capture a station though. Think Domination game mode from Unreal Tournament. It would be annoying to not allow the losers of the fight to dock, so maybe the only advantage it would give to the winning nation is lower prices.

My thoughts on "capturing stations"... it sounds negative at first but please read the whole thing and you will see my point (i hope):

1) You shouldn't be allowed to capture a station in the sense that most are talking about. It just wouldn't be fair to the many people who were docked there and weren't online at the time to defend themselves. If I had worked my way 400 sectors out into deep space, and the station there was "captured" I would be very upset (not to mention confused) when I logged onto find my ship back in sector 1.

2) You can gain the same effect by allowing any nation to dock at any station. Rather than having the station un-dockable, just have the sentries shoot the crap out of anyone who tries to dock from another nation. This requires more defenses (and smarter ones than we have now). Basically if you wan to dock in an enemy station, you'll have to fight your way in.

3) Once inside the station, you should have very limited access to that stations goods. The item list should be minimal and everything (even repairs) should cost a lot. Why? Because prices/items should be affected by your reputation. You just blasted your way in! They aren't going to like you there! Along these lines, if you fight less (i.e., you just turbo in and take a beating) you'll be better received once you are there. However, if you destroy a lot of defenses, drop mines, station nuke or anything like that, you'll be blacklisted by the merchants.

4) Your reputation in any one station should shift back to neutral over time, so if you spend enough time in a station, you will have more access to goods and prices will get better. This could also be affected by the number of your nation's ships in that station. If there are 10 red ships in the gold station, the merchants there will treat you nicely, but if nine ships leave, they'll turn on the odd man again.

...I think this system would work. It allows RPG-players to have fun as well as the more arcade-oriented players. It promotes teamwork, and it is realistic in terms of the game universe. However, it relies heavily on the much-needed reputation system, and I can't imagine that it is anywhere close. It also requires that the reputation system is robust enough to handle this type of thing.

One option, Craigus Meridius. You might not lose your ship while logging off. But when you log back on go to slappys idea, you only get the bare minimal of goods and they cost a lot.


The other option is, you lose everything in that station. It's more realisitic. Imagine an air force base in real life. I land my f14 there and go home. The next day, the Chinese have taken over the base. Their not gonna let me walk up to my f14 and take off now are they? same concept here.

Maybe instead of capturing bases you could capture mining/manufacturing operations in a certain sector, causing the goods normally produced in that sector to be available at your nation's home base at reduced prices.

Maybe you could clso capture population centres in the same way, leading to more taxes collected by your nation, allowing your home sector to pay higher prices for the trade goods you bring in (which would be used to build things like capital ships.)

"The other option is, you lose everything in that station. It's more realisitic. Imagine an air force base in real life. I land my f14 there and go home. The next day, the Chinese have taken over the base. Their not gonna let me walk up to my f14 and take off now are they? same concept here."

That is very realistic, but this is a game. If a was paying $x.xx a month to play this game, and my much-advanced and heavily outfitted ship was just gone... I wouldn't even ask why it was gone, I would just cancel my subscription.

Remember: in the long term, money will be harder to get and death will have more severe consequences.

If you park your only ship, in which you invested practically all of your money, in a recently conquered unsafe outpost before logging off... you deserve to go bankrupt :) It's like parking your brand new ferrari for which you sold your house so you could afford it, on a nuclear weapons testing facility. I agree with slappyknappy... If you don't want to lose it, you park it somewhere safe.

once you have captured a sector it would be nice if you could invest money in bigger space stations, or more powerful defensive turrets for the space station. That would basically mean, the longer you can keep a space station, the harder it gets for the enemy to capture it. You could make a "donation" system... Every team member can "donate" to a specific space station, and when a certain amount of credits is reached, it evolves to the next "level" :) Donating to space stations could also increase your reputation (once that is implemented), because it improves safety.

D'OH.. i mean.. i DO NOT agree with slappyknappy :)

You do not pay $$$ so that the game would go easy on you. You pay $$ to play it.

Given it some more thoughts... To conquer a certain sector, you need to destroy the space station... Then either you start out with a small outpost again, OR without a space station, and you need to pay some money to build an outpost. Why would YOU invest money in a space station? Because the more you invest in a space station, the better your rep., the lower the prices you have to pay... This will add an interesting aspect to the trading (investing).

(i do suggest that we make the home station of each nation indestructable :)

Going easy? I never said that... I said that I oppose the game killing my ships and characters when I'm not even online to try and protect them. There's a big difference.

Imagine playing D&D; you've been playing a character for three years. One saturday, you show up for a game, only to be sent back home by the DM; "Sorry... that Inn you were staying in was burned down by bandits last night... your character is dead."